The album Talk That Talk got to number one with only 9,578 sales.

Album sales have fallen to a new low after Rihanna topped the UK chart with a weekly sale of fewer than 10,000 copies.

Talk That Talk, released last year, returned to the number one slot with sales of 9,578 CDs and downloads.

It is the lowest weekly sales recorded since records began in 1994. The previous record low was the 11,981 set by The Cranberries' Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? 947 weeks ago.

The Olympics was cited as contributory factor to low sales. But it is part of a trend with album sales falling quickly, down 13.8% in the first half of 2012.

The record industry hopes that Sunday night’s Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, now an iTunes album, will ne a big seller. This Autumn artists such as Robbie Williams, The Killers and Mumford & Sons, might make up for some of this year’s lost sales.

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Adele’s 21 and Ed Sheeran’s + have boosted all-time UK sales of digital albums past the 100 million milestone. But with streaming services like Spotify luring digital buyers from iTunes, record companies believe that album “plays” should be included in the charts.

A BPI spokesman said: “Digital albums are a growing format for music fans, up 17.5 per cent year-on-year and now account for more than 35 per cent of album sales overall.”

Rihanna’s album sold 163,000 copies in its opening week last November.